Time for Tricorders

[Mr.Steam]

Now that gathering blocks through mining has become very important I think it is time we had a "meta-item" tricorder that can be purchased at shops. The tricorder can scan a whole planet, planet face, or asteroid and tell us its composition.

EXAMPLE:

Scanning asteroid 951
composition:

cinnabar 70%
red rock 20%
Parstun 5%
Ferkiteen 5%

This scan can be performed from a distance 2-3 km.

This would greatly improve our mining ability. We wouldn't need to sit around for 10 minutes waiting for a planet to load if it doesn't even have any minerals we need.

Later when creatures are included it will scan for life forms.

 

[MineCatFTW]

I like it, but 2-3 km seems excessive. Maybe 500 meters.

 

[Mr.Steam]

I like it, but 2-3 km seems excessive. Maybe 500 meters.

Yeah, maybe personal tricorders could have a limited range, but perhaps we could have ship based tricorders/scanners with longer range. Maybe the scanners we have now will include this functionality.

 

[Ithirahad]

Ferkiteen 5%

Ferkiteen? Fur-kitten? An asteroid whose composition includes furry kittens for 5% of its mass?

...Jokes aside, I love the idea. All the agrees.

 

[Criss]

I'm all for tricorders. But I think scanning larger objects should require a ship module. Nothing big. 1 or 2% for optimal efficiency vs the 5% for jump drives. This only applies if the current ship scanners do not ever gain the ability to scan objects instead of local ship activity.

 

[Incap]

This should be a standard feature of the scanners. Hell, make it operate like a weapon computer, left click for a focused scan of a celestial object or ship, right click for a overall scan for the current sector and surrounding sectors.

 

[jayman38]

For RP, it would be great to have an array of personal-usable objects like tricorders. It would be extra fun if they are animated in multiple different ways.

I can see personal tricorders doing the work of "block diagnostics". Instead of creating an animation cycle on a computer block like I am always talking about in RP threads, I can see where Dave (or an astronaut name of your choice) points their tricorder at a computer block, and the tricorder goes through a "diagnostic" animation while the computer remains unchanged. It would give crew something else to do and to see for fun RP.

Maybe even paint the scanned block's vital info onto the tricorder's texture, so that you can see on the tricorder's screen in-game, the block's details, similar to seeing shield and energy values on display blocks. You'll see this in some games where the ammo count is painted directly onto the weapon your character is holding. (E.g. This weapon computer indicates 100% loaded, 50 linked blocks, 1 slave weapon; This shield block indicates 100% shield charge, 100% recharge rate, 500k shields, 10k s/s recharge; etc.)